Field day visitors to show their fencing skills in Clipex time trial

Field day visitors are invited to test their fencing skills and take part in a fencing time trial at the Clipex site at the Henty Machinery Field Days.

The trial, which was also run at AgQuip, will race contestants against the clock in tying off with traditional pre-bent ties versus Clipex posts.

The winner at Henty will receive a pallet of Clipex posts.

To enter the trial, contestants have to complete two sections. Firstly, they hit the electronic start timer and then tie off three plain wires to three posts using the pre-bent ties and hit a checkpoint timer.

After this, they tie off three more plain wires to Clipex posts and hit a finish timer with the fastest combined time winning a free pallet of posts.

At AgQuip, the time taken to tie off the Clipex fence hardly varied among a range of contestants, whereas the time taken to tie off pre-bent ties varied greatly depending on the contestant’s skill.

The Clipex fence was attached consistently every time, where as the pre-bent ties were tied off poorly by some contestants trying to achieve a faster time.

Over the three days of AgQuip, the total average time to attach a Clipex tie was 1.3 seconds compared to 15.4 seconds for pre-bent ties – or 12 times slower.

Considering a fence with five wires and 5m spacings will use 1000 ties per kilometre, that is the equivalent of over 4.3 hours of tying off per kilometre. Clipex would take less than 22 minutes.

The fencing time trial will take place at the Clipex site 601-603 Block O each day of the field days.